What is Culture and How Do We Transform It? Part 1

The Liturgy As the Wellspring of Catholic and the Wider Contemporary Culture

This is the first of three articles exploring a Catholic understanding of culture. This week, I’ll define culture, discuss how it manifests and sustains its core beliefs and values, and explain why it is important to evangelize the culture. In the next two installments, I’ll examine how freedom, properly understood, underpins authentic Christian cultures of different nations, and finally, in the third, how the liturgy of the Church serves as the wellspring for a Christian culture and therefore holds the key to evangelizing the American national culture into one of greater beauty that speaks of the love of God.

What is culture? 

Even if they can’t say exactly what it is, people care about culture. They will fight to protect it if they feel it is good and is threatened, and they battle to change it if they don’t like it. Culture matters because people often perceive it as a sign of what society values. When that culture resonates with the values they already hold, they perceive it as beautiful and feel, ‘at home in the world’, as Roger Scruton, the English philosopher, aptly puts it. When the converse is true, and it is a sign of values that don’t match their own, they are ill at ease.

The Western front of the US Capitol building

A Definition of Culture

Here is my definition of culture:

A culture is the emergent pattern of activity associated with a society. It manifests, sustains, and nurtures the core beliefs, values, and priorities of that society.

This is the definition that, to me, best fits most people’s idea of what culture is. We all recognize cultures that characterize a society or nation, subgroups within a society, or even ideas, ideologies, and faiths. Some are good, and some are bad. We talk of American or British culture, perhaps, or of café culture, drug culture, youth culture, Christian culture, Western culture, secular culture, Marxist culture, and so on. When we do so, we recognise a pattern of activity that reflects their shared values and connects members of that society to one another, thereby distinguishing it from other societies. In this context, “emergent” refers to something that arises organically and spontaneously from the complex interactions of individuals within a society, rather than being deliberately designed, imposed, or reducible to any single person’s intentions or actions. 1

Culture Both Reflects and Influences a Worldview

Culture not only reflects attitudes, but it also tends to influence people at a deep level. Put simply, the more we see it, the more we tend to like it, and the pattern of our personal pattern of activity and attitudes tends to harmonize with it.

So when the culture reflects my values, I like it, not only because it affirms my own beliefs by telling me that others believe it too, but also because it reassures me that the values it reveals will very likely be in this society in the future, as the culture influences the next generation to hold the values that are dear to me.

On the other hand, when a culture speaks to me of values that are contrary to my own, I feel uneasy, not only because I have to resist its influence, which tends to undermine my own faith and values, but also because I worry that it will influence others to believe and act in a way that is contrary to my own beliefs and actions.

This visceral response explains why culture can become a battleground and why, indeed, it is worth fighting for. Christians should engage with culture and work to transform it with the best weapons at their disposal: righteousness, love, and faith.

Culture Works with Politics to Change Society

One way to understand the importance of culture is to think of the current struggle for the abolition of abortion. We see protests and petitions, prayer vigils and novenas, all undertaken to influence politicians and legislators and to effect changes in the law. Since the overturning of Roe v. Wade in the United States, political battles have shifted from the national stage to the states, but the war continues.

There is a way to influence behaviour without resorting to the coercion of the law. And that is through the culture. Culture can be a powerful force that influences opinion. Its impact is slower than that of law, but nevertheless more powerful and longer-lasting. The power of culture to persuade was known by those who wanted to legalize abortion in the first place, and they focused their efforts on influencing the culture long before Roe v. Wade was instituted. They first created a culture of death, and then they sought to change the law. I believe that if we wish to replace the culture of death with one that supports the lives of the unborn, then we must also work to transform our culture into one of beauty, freedom, and love. Such a culture inclines people to seek what is good and true, and as a result, fewer people will wish to have abortions. This is not to argue that we should abandon the fight for just law. Rather, seeking cultural change should be undertaken in conjunction with efforts to influence the judiciary and legislative bodies.

A beautiful Christian culture can positively influence thinking in all aspects of life, not just the single issue of abortion. And it creates a positive feedback dynamic that reinforces people’s desire for the common good. The more people see it, the more they desire it, the more they wish to conform to the values it manifests, and, in turn, the more they contribute to the continued creation of a beautiful culture.

The Palace of Westminster, including the House of Parliament, London, England; Image from Wikimedia Commons, by Terry Ott, CC BY 2.0

We Need the Aerial View of Society to Recognize Culture

We see a pattern that characterizes a culture most clearly by looking at society as a whole rather than by a close analysis of its parts. Consider, for example, the culture of France. I can’t look at one Frenchman and tell what French culture is. I don’t know if the things I notice about him are unique to him or characteristics of all French people. When I observe the members of a French family, having more French people to observe, I can start to see what each has in common and how they interact. There is a discernible pattern of personal interaction as well as individual attributes. Even then, while what I see in the culture of a French family is a better indicator of French culture than the observation of a single Frenchman, I can’t be sure what aspects of the pattern for the family are unique to them rather than characterizing the whole French nation.

I can never be certain of what characterizes all French people until I have studied the whole pattern of all French people through time. This is an almost impossible standard, but the more time I spend in France observing people and the more I study its history and its art and artefacts and so on, the more I am going to get a sense of what that whole might be and start to have some confidence that I understand French culture. My understanding of French culture deepens as I become increasingly familiar with its various aspects. As I build up a picture of what it means to be French, I will form an opinion on the beauty of French culture and, hence, on the goodness of the French as a nation.

The Palais de Luxembourg, in Paris, France, which housed the French legislature in the early 19th century. Image from Wikimedia Commons by xiquinhosilva, CC BY 2.0 

Beauty and Culture

A culture of beauty speaks to us of love, just as a culture of ugliness speaks of a lack of love and of death. The more that love is the governing principle of the personal relationships and actions of society’s members, the more beautiful that culture will be. If it speaks of love, then it also speaks to us of freedom and faith, for there is no love without freedom, and freedom is greatest for those with faith.

It is said that French is the language of love. I would say that, along with France, all nations - even the English! 2 - can speak the language of love through their cultures, and the degree to which they do so is the degree to which they reflect the Christian faith. Each, in its own characteristic way, can have a culture that is beautiful and which speaks to us of loving action. The most beautiful culture is one that communicates God’s love for mankind. As a detached observer, I can appreciate the beauty of French Christian culture when it speaks of the love that the French people have for one another. However, as an Englishman, I will appreciate French culture even more if it reflects the love that the French people have for me. And I will love it even more when it also speaks of the love God has for me as every Christian culture should (albeit with a French accent!).

The source of all love is God. We can only love each other because God loves us first, and we accept His love. Only when we accept His love do we have the capacity to love others. This is true even for the person who thinks he hates God. God loves him, and to the degree that he loves his fellows, he is, at some level, accepting God’s loving guidance in his life. As all human love is a participation in God’s love, there are aspects of our loving action that are common to us all; they are universal, and the signs of this are apparent in the culture. Our attitude to God, therefore, is the foundational principle that shapes all cultures, and to the degree that we love God, it will be beautiful.

John Paul II put the general principle as follows in his encyclical Centesimus annus:

Man is understood in a more complete way when he is situated within the sphere of culture through his language, history, and the position he takes towards the fundamental events of life, such as birth, love, work and death. At the heart of every culture lies the attitude man takes to the greatest mystery: the mystery of God. Different cultures are basically different ways of facing the question of the meaning of personal existence. When this question is eliminated, the culture and moral life of nations are corrupted. For this reason the struggle to defend work was spontaneously linked to the struggle for culture and for national rights.

As the Christian faith offers us the deepest participation in the love of God, to the degree that a culture is authentically Christian, it will be the fullest cultural expression of what is good, true, beautiful and loving. As such, Christian cultures are higher and more noble than other cultures, which are good only to the degree that they participate in these universal ideas. Furthermore, as these principles are universal in their appeal, so is Christian culture, which should be offered to all peoples, just as the Faith should be offered to all peoples.

There is no generic Christian culture, for the principles that govern every culture (such as a love of the common good) are expressed in ways that are particular to a time, a place, and a people, while simultaneously participating in universal principles of what is good, beautiful and true for all. Therefore, not all Christian cultures will be identical, but to the extent that they are Christian, they will share common aspects and be good for all who encounter them.

The goal for us as Americans is to form an American culture that speaks of the love of God in a uniquely American way, that is, as one nation under God.

The Jefferson Memorial, Washington DC; Image from Wikimedia Commons by King of Hearts, CC BY-SA 4.0

Footnotes: 1 Nobel prize-winning economist, Frederick Hayek, described a similar phenomenon, which he called ‘spontaneous’ order. In this context, Hayek’s spontaneous order can be seen as the blueprint for an emergent economic culture, wherein complex market institutions, prices, and norms arise organically from the decentralized, self-interested actions of individuals, fostering a dynamic, adaptive system that no single planner could foresee or impose.

2 I write as a naturalized American who grew up and lived in England for 45 years!